1796: Ann & Eliza – This British East Indiaman, built in 1789, was travelling from Bengal back to England with a cargo of arrack (alcohol) and rice. All the databases place the wreck between Bushmans River Mouth and Sundays River Mouth (Turner 1988; Morris 2005; Levine 1989; Theal 1897).
A 2020 underwater archaeological impact assessment for the proposed marine servitudes for the Coega SEZ places the wreck site as being on the North Shore of Algoa Bay.
The Cape Archives (CD1/45) state that the vessel was lost on 22 January 1796, between The Great Fish River and Sundays River. However, when reading the archival document, a series of events are laid out by the survivors on their arrival in Cape Town in April 1796.
The events are summarised as follows:
- On 23rd the survivors, two English crewmen (the Chief Mate and Second Mate); a Spanish crewman and three Lascars, set off from the wreck in an easterly direction. After three days they reached the Swartkops River.
- Unable to cross the river, they returned to the wreck. Assuming they spent at least a day foraging for food and looking for a place to cross, it took them five days to return to the wreck. These men had survived a brutal wrecking that killed at least 36 fellow crewmen.
- They were bruised and hungry.
- They spent between 12 and 15 days recuperating at the wreck site, before setting off to the east.
- They travelled for twelve days along the beach and stated that they were unable to travel inland as they were surrounded by thick bush and sand dunes. They eventually got to a river where they met indigenous people who fed and sheltered them, then they were sent on to other indigenous people until they met some white farmers.
- They returned to the wreck by wagon, and this took them 22 days.
- When they arrived, the wreck had been extensively plundered by the local farmers, including some of the wreckage that had been burnt to retrieve the iron.
- The survivors returned to Cape Town and gave their account on 3 May 1796.
